Lol I pull around a 3 Distance to TJ Max for 4ghz/HT/1.225 Im on the badass stock cooler though=why im running 3.8/No/1.175 right now. I know if i did linpack, it would throttle in seconds, but the biggest workout my cores get is 4x FAH and it sits around 30 DTJMax
If i had better cooling, im pretty confident that it could go higher. The hardest problem i think would be getting my uncore to cooperate as it seems to have problems above 3.2Ghz. I think its the IMC fault, but im too lazy to test it out as of right now.
In your OP you said that you managed to get to 4.0, but temps were a little crazy. Thats to be expected as these things chug power like crazy, i think people get the impression that these chips hit 4.0 with ease from the early adopters who are running megahalems or custom CNC'd .2mm waterblocks and 2x480 rads. These same early adopters have been overclocking for years and understand that the CPU is only one part of the equation of many variables. See now i can say im prime stable 4/HT/1.225, but it took me a long ass time to figure out that my uncore was what was holding me back. A lot of the threads i see now with people trying to overclock, the OP is just asking for "what settings do i need for 4ghz?" without trying to understand the concepts behind overclocking, i mean, jesus there is a thread on the front page called OC without a brain, where the guy is pushing 1.45v on a 860